Barre code Removal

[Lunettesman]

Hi FOH friends, hope everyone is fine. I couldn't find infos on it, hope I haven't missed it. 

 

Why so trusted cigars source remove the Barre code and sometimes even the green label? I find this annoying. 

 

Thanks guys. 

[ATGroom]

Habanos SA distributes through a network of independent distributors who each have the exclusive right to import cigars into a specific territory. Any retailer who wishes to sell Cuban cigars can only purchase their cigars from the official distributor (or a sub-distributor) for their reason.

The barcodes on boxes are logged when they leave Havana, and can be traced to the official distributor that first took delivery of the boxes.

Sometimes a retailer might want to purchase from a distributor other than the official one for their region, either because they can get a better price via currency arbitrage, or perhaps because they need multiple sources to get enough supply. For the distributors (or more likely, a sub-distributor), selling outside their region is a violation of their supply agreement with Habanos, but a sale is a sale.

So, when they sell in this way, they remove the barcodes from the seals so that the boxes can't be traced back to the original distributor. The seals also have the serial number microprinted in several locations on the body of the seal, so in order to properly remove the number they need to either scratch out all these numbers, or remove the entire seal.

These "grey market" sellers may have good reputations, however, their supply chains are necessarily opaque so they can never be considered to be as trusted as a retailer who only sells cigars from their official distributor.

[Kongelunden]

3 minutes ago, ATGroom said:

Habanos SA distributes through a network of independent distributors who each have the exclusive right to import cigars into a specific territory. Any retailer who wishes to sell Cuban cigars can only purchase their cigars from the official distributor (or a sub-distributor) for their reason.

The barcodes on boxes are logged when they leave Havana, and can be traced to the official distributor that first took delivery of the boxes.

Sometimes a retailer might want to purchase from a distributor other than the official one for their region, either because they can get a better price via currency arbitrage, or perhaps because they need multiple sources to get enough supply. For the distributors (or more likely, a sub-distributor), selling outside their region is a violation of their supply agreement with Habanos, but a sale is a sale.

So, when they sell in this way, they remove the barcodes from the seals so that the boxes can't be traced back to the original distributor. The seals also have the serial number microprinted in several locations on the body of the seal, so in order to properly remove the number they need to either scratch out all these numbers, or remove the entire seal.

These "grey market" sellers may have good reputations, however, their supply chains are necessarily opaque so they can never be considered to be as trusted as a retailer who only sells cigars from their official distributor.

Wow - did not know this. Nice info - thanks for sharing.

[Lunettesman]

Very informative. Thank you sir. I wondered why often only the bare code is removed. Because you can read the code on the micro printing anyway. Thabjsn for the answer. 

[Habana Mike]

18 hours ago, Lunettesman said:

Very informative. Thank you sir. I wondered why often only the bare code is removed. Because you can read the code on the micro printing anyway. Thabjsn for the answer. 

Harder to post legible pics of the micro-printed codes.

[Baccy]

Ive only gotten one box this way but I rage when the microprints are removed. That's just overkill as most people honestly still don't even know about them. I can understand removing the barcodes because they're right out front and highly visible. I have good vision and I normally need a magnifying glass to read the microprints...

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[SCgarman]

As long as the cigars are genuine, makes no difference if the government seal numbers are all scratched off. 

[Chef86]

In my experience I’ve only had this done on less expensive boxes. What I feel I’ve learned is distributors that will do this with a cheap box will gladly sell you fakes as well. If you see this from a online source just don’t use them again


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[NSXCIGAR]

2 hours ago, Chef86 said:

In my experience I’ve only had this done on less expensive boxes. What I feel I’ve learned is distributors that will do this with a cheap box will gladly sell you fakes as well. If you see this from a online source just don’t use them again.

No correlation I've ever noticed based on price excepting super premium like Behike or Reserva which buyers might get antsy about missing codes. There aren't enough boxes of those for HSA to care anyway so the distributors might tend to leave them on. 

Also, distributors don't sell fakes. They don't sell to the public. They sell to vendors. The distributors are removing the codes, not the vendors. The distributors don't want HSA to be aware of the stock they wholesale out to gray market vendors or anyone outside their distribution area.

If you avoid vendors who sell boxes without codes (all gray market vendors) you'll be very limited in terms of options.